1st Edition
Clinical Social Work with Individuals, Families, and Groups The Healing Power of Relationships
This textbook equips Masters of Social Work (MSW) students and beginning social workers with the personal and professional tools needed to work successfully with individuals, families, and groups, guided by the social justice values of the profession.
This book is a comprehensive description of practical, field-tested, ready-to-apply interventions based on the author’s 40 years of practice, as well as his national and international teaching, training, and supervision. By drawing case illustrations from composites of actual practice, he demonstrates how to apply various models, as well as how to identify, avoid, and rectify clinical errors. This book also provides core understandings and techniques from models of psychotherapy alongside essential clinical skills that cut across these approaches, such as engagement, establishing therapeutic relationships, managing one’s anxiety, reaching for pain, and the clinician’s use of self. Filled with reflective questions and ideas for class discussion, the book addresses how to heal relationships across all contexts, such as with clients in diverse and oppressed groups and doing clinical social work during the age of Covid.
Providing a description of clinical social work that is congruent with diversity, equity, and social justice, this excellent textbook is for students and instructors of MSW courses and will prove indispensable to beginning practitioners.
Introduction
Chapter 1: Social Workers’ Relationship to Themselves
Chapter 2: Clinical Social Work Defined: Psychotherapy Plus
Chapter 3: Tips for Getting Started
Chapter 4: Clinical Social Work with Individuals: It’s About the Relationship
Chapter 5: Healing Relationships with Each Other—Part I: Couples
Chapter 6: Healing Relationships with Each Other—Part II: Families
Chapter 7: Healing Relationship with Each Other—Part III: Groups
Chapter 8: Healing Relationships with Clients from Diverse and Oppressed Groups
Chapter 9: Ethics: Protecting the Healing Relationship
Chapter 10: Healing Relationships in the Age of CovidEpilogue: Some Closing Thoughts
Appendix: Questions for Individual Self-Reflection and
Class Discussion
Appendix: Questions for Individual Self-Reflection and Class Discussion
Biography
Michael C. LaSala, Ph.D., LCSW, is Professor of Social Work at Rutgers University and a master clinician with over 40 years of practice experience. As a teacher and trainer of international renown, he has won several teaching awards, and is the recipient of the American Family Therapy Academy’s 2017 Distinguished Contribution to Social Justice Award.
"LaSala, a well-known and admired social work educator and scholar, has created a highly readable and instructional book that is based on his 40-plus years of practice experience. It incorporates key theoretical concepts with recent research and practice wisdom and underscores the importance of self-reflection, the use of self, and a relational approach. I would highly recommend this book that also includes vivid case examples and engaging exercises for social work practice courses and early career clinicians who are interested in furthering their knowledge and skills."
Andrew W. Safyer, Academic Dean, Institute for Clinical Social Work"In this time of Covid craziness, who doesn’t need some healing? Making use of his 40-plus years of practice, supervision, training, and teaching Dr. Michael LaSala presents us in ten chapters with a volume that describes a model of clinical practice that focuses on healing relationships including the relationship the worker has with themself, with their clients, and the relationships between clients in couples, families, and groups. This is a wonderful book for clinical practitioners, for students of social work and for mental health professionals of all disciplines who may feel worn out and in need of regeneration and reminders about the healing nature of individual, couples, families, and group relationships. This book is an important reminder that the healers also need to be healed. It should be required reading for all clinicians – not just during these challenging times that we are living in, but for sustaining and replenishing our clinical practice in everyday life."
Gerald P. Mallon, LCSW, DSW, Associate Dean of Scholarship and Research, Julia Lathrop Professor of Child Welfare"Drawing on 40-plus years of social work practice, supervision, training, and teaching, and and his own life experiences, Dr. Michael C. LaSala’s book, Clinical Social Work with Individuals, Families, and Groups: The Healing Power of Relationships, provides a unique perspective on clinical practice that focuses on healing relationships. The book is ideal for students and new practitioners as they begin their journey to understand the importance of relationships in all aspects of clinical social work practice through research, case examples and reflection exercises that also includes a focus on the impacts of the pandemic and racial justice issues. As dean of a social work program with a focus on preparing students for clinical practice, this book should be on the syllabus and required reading for any courses on clinical social work practice!"
Jo Ann R. Regan, Ph.D., MSW, Dean, National Catholic School of Social Service at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.
